Trip Number: 4
Where: Coffee Truck Rally at The Eastern Prom, Portland, ME
Date: Sunday, October 30, 2016
Katie: Triple Chocolate Spiced Mocha
Addie: Hot Chocolate
Mileage: 8.23 miles
Bike Friendliness:  Good enough.  Eastern Prom is like a park, so it’s not like you need to lock up your bike and go into a shop or something.  There are plenty of signs and fences and benches to lock up to.

Here’s our pile o’ bikes locked up to the fence/sign post.

This was such a fun event!  I had read about it here about a week prior and thought it would be the perfect thing for Coffeeneuring.  I wasn’t really sure what to expect, and as we got close to the expected location, I didn’t really see much.  I was pretty worried, since this was Addie’s longest bike ride yet, and I’d even gotten Mike to come.  I was going to feel pretty bad if there was nothing there after all that.  But sure enough, after a few more pedal strokes, a fleet of coffee trucks came into view.

Actually there were three coffee trucks and two food trucks which was just about right – and quite a crowd of people!

We had heard that Urban Sugar would be there.  We’d only managed to catch this donut truck one other time, but we were already big fans.

We waited in line for about 15 minutes just to get our order in then had to wait about another 15-20 minutes to actually get our donuts, but we enjoyed the views while we waited.

Quite a few boats still in.

You can kind of make out Fort Gorges on the horizon.  We love to get Otto’s takeout from their Munjoy Hill location and eat it on the Prom in the summertime.

I don’t think Mike was too thrilled with the scene.  He’s more of a Cumby’s Coffee kind of guy, but he was a good sport.  The theme of the day was for the trucks to offer some unusual coffee drinks which didn’t help, but he found plain old coffee at Maker’s Mug and I tried out the Triple Chocolate Spiced Mocha.  I liked mine, but Mike wasn’t too impressed.  Both of us thought the coffee could have been hotter.

Addie got her hot chocolate at Urban Sugar, and we all thought it was quite good.  Addie has it tied for first with Black Cat’s.  (I’m ordering reusable cups – now!)

It was nice to have Mike a long to take some photos of us Coffeeneuring buddies, since I’m not so great with the selfie.

Still waiting for our donuts, Mike decided to check out The Salt Box Cafe.

Their amazing pesto egg sandwich turned his day around!

We might even be able to take him Coffeeneuring with us again.

Finally our reward!  So so good!  Crunchy and warm and sweet.  Surprisingly, we were able to stop ourselves from eating all of them and nervously moved them from bike basket to bike basket to try to find the most stable location.

After enjoying a donut, Mike went his own way to pick up some groceries, and Addie and I headed down to East End Beach to hit the port-o-potty.

Addie got to see the train go by while I was in there which she thought was pretty cool.  I only managed snap a far away shot.  This is the train they use for The Polar Express around Christmastime.  Not sure what was going on that day.

I did finally manage to capture a photo of Addie in action.

We managed to stay on trails most of the way home which is so much more relaxing.  I don’t mind riding in traffic myself, but it’s a little scarier being responsible for someone else – someone little, especially.

One of my favorite parts of the trail is the graffiti wall.  It changes all the time, and it was the most colorful I’d ever seen it.

I don’t think Addie had ever seen it before, and she got quite a kick out of it.

We stopped on a less scenic part of the trail to take a break.  In spite of the lack of scenery, there was a nice new stone wall to sit on while we thought about Mike probably being in the Trader Joe’s that was in our sight.

The donuts were jumping around quite a bit in Addie’s basket, so we thought we’d better eat a couple more.

Joe, the only kid downstairs when we got home, managed to devour the last three before anyone else even knew they were there.

This ended up being a super-long Coffeeneuring expedition (time-wise) but definitely my favorite one yet.  I’m happy to know that Addie can go some longer distances as long as we have all the time in the world (we got passed by quite a few runners and one walker) and take some breaks.  That pace is actually quite enjoyable as long as we have nowhere else to be.